Here’s an amazing story about an Indian, Arunachalam Muruganantham who built a cost-effective sanitary napkin.
Napkins are manufactured in high cost machines only. The cost of the machine is about 75 lacs to 2.5 crores. Thereby, these machines are generally run and owned by multinational companies like Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble only.
By seeing the sanitary napkins whiteness, people who are interested to make these napkins feel that the material used for napkin manufacture is cotton. They used viscose cloth to wrap the cotton. The cotton has a tendency to absorb the liquid, but is releases under slightest pressure or sqeeze,Due to this simple reason acceptability and salability became tougher which led to collapse of these industries. But on automated plant big companies are not using cotton instead they are using wood pulp.
Wood pulp and non woven fabrics are generally procured in roll forms that can be processed on high cost machines only. The nature of the wood pulp is that it will absorb and retain the liquid even under pressure .This would give a dry feel to the user.
How these sanitary napkins are made?
Powered by electricity and foot pedals, the machine de-fibers the cellulose, compresses it into napkin form, seals it with non-woven fabrics.
Finally sterilizes it with ultraviolet light. His company Jayaashree Industries can now make 1,000 sanitary napkins a day. The cost of 8 Napkin Pads are Rs. 13 that makes up Rs.1.62 per napkin. Have a look at the making of these sanitary pads:
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